This is blowing up today in conservative circles, days late. It may be nothing, but the implications stink. Brazile’s statement is a classic of redirection. You’d think one person would belly up to the bar and say, unequivocally, “Yes, I emailed that. Here’s my copy. But ...” Noone’s come straight out to show intentional manipulation, either. Where’s the line-by-line comparisons with and without alterations? Just saying. You can claim ‘we need to check these’ ... I know my email. I have it right here. I can tell you in minutes if I sent something, and if it’s been changed. I expect better from politicians, who have whole phalanxes of staff handling this stuff.

The Nation: Michelle Obama Just Delivered the Most Powerful Speech of the 2016 Campaign.

NY Times: New Jersey Transit, a Cautionary Tale of Neglect.

“In the 1990s, New Jersey Transit was riding high. Its ridership was increasing, and its trains were new and running on time.” Who comes up with this stuff? Um ... NO. Not new. Not running on time. I stopped commuting in the mid-‘90’s. Overcrowded, miserable. It was better at the turn from ‘80’s to ‘90’s. The tracks were always in terrible shape. The bridges around Newark, an embarrassment. The concrete ties would shatter if the Amtraks went too fast, so they had a speed limit. The wooden ties, you could pull the spikes out with your bare hands. Some had probably been there since the turn of the last century. NJ Transit *always* needed a ‘sugar daddy’. Christie pulled it away, in good Republican fashion, and now you’ve got people dead. This isn’t hard to figure out.

SciAm: DEA Drops Ban on Herbal Supplement Kratom.

Suspicious. There seems to be very little science on this, other than overdose stats (and those are not high). Given the potential use profiles, one can’t help but imagine drug companies want an exclusive on the active ingredients (at maximum profit).

Oh and yes, I did watch the debate. Or ‘game show’, as I like to think of it.

Hillary still doesn’t have a strong enough comeback for the ACA price increases. She’s most vulnerable there.

Donald, on certain subjects, was just all over the place. He started off pretty focused - bang on about the problems of the ACA’s costs, yet no real coherent fixes - and ended up a mess afterwards. I felt like I was watching an orange marmalade danish exploding on my kitchen table.

My bugbear, the ACA. I’m looking at a near-$7k deductible, $45-75 copays AFTER deductible for doctor visits (full price before), for the cost of a freakin’ mortgage (over $1k) for the two of us. And that’s the second cheapest offered right now, before the November increases.

I will not continue to pay for the [former] uninsured to have good free coverage, when I’m checking Youtube to fix my own health issues. It costs so much, I have no extra income to pay for the actual doctor visits. Unless I dip into retirement - or go bankrupt, live off the dole and get it all for free. There seems to be an economic range, a spot between subsidies and being comfortably middle-class, where folks like myself end up in tax and health care cost hell.

This is not about selfishness, or conservative/liberal ideology. It’s about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The ACA is violating all of that, here in NM. It feels like an old-fashioned shakedown, courtesy of the US government. It’s wrong.

Also, Kaiser (who gets quoted all the time in healthcare analysis articles) is FULL OF BS. I have a friend in Rhode Island who’s facing huge increases, and Kaiser claims RI is going DOWN 14%. Press, do your duty. Follow up on this, hard. We’re being fed bullbananas on the actual increases in costs.